When it comes to partnerships with clients, OSC strives to find the most efficient, cost-saving methods to benefit all parties involved. One way in which OSC accomplishes this goal is by partnering with offshore vendors.

OSC’s Loretta Johnson, SVP and Service Delivery Director, manages the company’s offshore resources and vendors. She shared inside knowledge about offshoring, including how it benefits both OSC and clients, as well as the high standards that come with this type of service.

What is Offshoring?

“In simple terms, it’s a practice of placing certain processes within an organization in an overseas environment,” Johnson said. “It’s basically setting up a shop in another country to do the same set tasks that are being executed in the U.S.”

Offshoring at OSC

OSC uses offshoring in many aspects of the company, but particularly in three areas: Operations, Quality Assurance (QA), and Compliance Quality Control (QC). Currently, vendor partners are located across the Philippines and in many parts of India.

Offshoring in the Operations department is primarily for data capture, as well as outbound business-to-business calls. QA includes report reviews and some additional quality reviews. Vendors also support the functionality of Compliance QC in the data entry environment.

Vendor Specialties

Each vendor brings a unique skillset to the team.

For example, one current vendor does nearly everything operationally that the onshore team does, including data entry, outbound calling, escrow QC, and Compliance QC. Another vendor specializes in web lookups and data entry, consisting of workflow and unidentified processing (UI). One vendor in the Philippines is now performing inbound agent calling.

In the end, it depends on what services OSC has engaged with clients to supply.

“If we have a commercial lender as an example, but they’re also eligible for outsourcing, then I’ll look at the expertise of my current vendors and select the one best suited for the client’,” Johnson said. “A lot of consideration goes into it.”

Depending on the complexity and uniqueness of the data and services required, some tasks may be kept in-house.

High Expectations and Even Higher Risk Management

Johnson doesn’t take chances with deadlines. When a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) is made with the client, OSC goes the extra mile to ensure that SLAs are met. The vendor’s deadline is set so there is additional time before the project’s final completion date.

“If needed for whatever reason, our internal teams can step in and get it to the finish line, so we are still meeting our agreed-upon timelines,” Johnson said. “The client is always on our mind and is our number one priority.”

There is always breathing room worked in to the timeline to ensure the lender’s SLAs with OSC are achieved.

A Two-Fold Benefit for Lenders

Outsourcing comes with many positive benefits for both OSC and its lender clients – the most significant being cost savings and unique efficiency.

“There’s definitely a cost savings by using offshore,” Johnson said. “It should be a lot less costly for the client if they choose to offshore as opposed to doing it onshore.”

It is a cost-effective option, allowing us to redeploy resources and deliver top-notch service. This is particularly true when a client requires special time and attention for unique components and needs.

Efficiency is another clear benefit of offshoring.

“You usually have continued service,” Johnson said. “When we’re home sleeping, I still have people in India and the Philippines who are working. This helps us meet project completion goals even more efficiently as that continuous processing leads to shorter turn times.”

It’s not just the continuous coverage that comes into play. When the United States is celebrating a national holiday, data entry work continues in the partner countries. It also helped during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We all had to do a lot of shifting around when COVID came around, but my vendors really came through,” Johnson said. “Our lenders really did not notice a difference in our processing because the way that we’re structured.”

Rigorous, Hands-On Vendor Management

Johnson was adamant about the rigorous standards to which OSC’s vendor partners are held, something she takes pride in.

“We’re not just scooping stuff and throwing it over the fence expecting our vendors to get it done, end of story,” she said. “We have regular weekly communication with vendors. Quality checks are done every single day and feedback is given every day. We have weekly review sessions and monthly governance sessions where we go through all the activities of the month.”

Vendors have high quality parameters to meet, and OSC is checking their work constantly.

“There is no disconnect between OSC and its vendor partners. The standards are the same,” Johnson added. “We measure our employees. We measure the performance of overall data capture. We measure the quality of what’s happening in our outbound call centers.”

In the end, there is a lot of monitoring that takes place to ensure every OSC client receives top-notch service from vendors, an extension of OSC’s workforce.